A Semester's Flirtation with the Input Hypothesis

Abstract

Three years ago, motivated by concern for stricter accountability to learner performance, I abandoned all my previously-used elementary Spanish texts and most of my customary methodology to embark afresh on the quest for classroom results that might evidence true proficiency. That process culminated last semester (Fall, 1987) in my implementation of what I understand of Stephen D. Krashen's Input Hypothesis. I make no claim to have implemented it well, only to have taken it seriously enough to give it a try. In 1985 I discovered Nicholas Shumway and David Forbes's Espaniol en espanol, a succinct, dialogless, eminently mature, direct method text package. Sensing that it was time for me to try a wholehearted direct method after skirting the issue for a quarter century, I adopted the package. During the subsequent two years of enthusiastic trial-and-error I gradually came to realize this text's tragic flaw: the give-and-take in Spanish on the structure of the language constitutes the beall and end-all of most of each chapter's activities. Students are supposed to use Spanish grammatical terminology to discuss Spanish grammar. Such an objective does ostensibly get the learners communicating in the TL, but what they communicate under such conditions is largely devoid of the target culturerelated content that, for so many of us, justifies required FL study within a liberal arts curriculum.